The 12 days of GCHQ quizmas: test your brain power with these daily puzzles

Study: 'What everyone thinks about war elephants is wrong'

Thanks to DNA analysis, scientists from the University of Illinois have provided answers to questions and rumours concerning the use of war elephants at the Battle of Raphia that date back thousands of years.

ADVERTISEMENT

For those that need a quick ancient history recap -- the Battle of Raphia, also known as the Battle of Gaza, took place in 217 BCE. One of the largest battles of the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Diadochi, it was fought between the forces of Ptolemy IV Philopator, pharaoh of Egypt, and Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid kingdom.

According to Polybius, a Greek historian who wrote of the battle roughly 70 years after the event (147 BCE) in his Histories, Ptolemy was in possession of 73 elephants, Antiochus 102. Crucially, historical records document Ptolemy as having sourced East African elephants (from what is now Eritrea) whereas Antiochus used only Asian elephants. "Ptolemy's elephants, however, declined the combat, as is the habit of African elephants; for unable to stand the smell and the trumpeting of the [Asian] elephants, and terrified, I suppose, also by their great size and strength, they at once turn tail and take to flight before they get near them."

Read more

WIRED Awake: 10 must-read articles for September 2

ByWIRED

Remarked Polybius.

However, we know today that African elephants are generally bigger and more imposing than their Indian cousins, which is why Polybius' historical account of the Indian elephants besting the larger African species has intrigued historians and scientists for years -- including Alfred Roca, a professor of animal sciences and member of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who, along with a small team, has recently published extensive research leading him to claim: "What everyone thinks about war elephants is wrong." "After the scramble for Africa by European nations, more specimens became available and it became clearer that African elephants were mostly larger than Asian elephants. At this point, speculation began about why the African elephants in the Polybius account might have been smaller. One scientist, Paules Deraniyagala, even suggested that they might have been an extinct smaller subspecies," said Neal Benjamin, an Illinois veterinary student who studies with Roca.

In 1948, British neurologist Sir William Gowers suggested Ptolemy actually fought with the much smaller African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis), which were more likely to submit to Indian elephants, rather than the considerably larger African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana). The question of whether or not this smaller species was deployed during the Battle of Raphia has remained unanswerable, until now. "Using three different markers, we established that the Eritrean elephants are actually savanna elephants," said Adam Brandt, a doctoral candidate in Roca's laboratory and first author on the paper. "Their DNA was very similar to neighbouring populations of East African savanna elephants but with very low genetic diversity, which was expected for such a small, isolated population."

ADVERTISEMENT

Surprisingly, the results reveal that the elephants were indeed the larger savanna variety, with no genetic ties to the smaller forest breed. The team studied the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of female elephants from Eritrea, which allowed the researchers to be so resolute with their findings. "In some sense, mtDNA is the ideal marker because it not only tells you what's there now, but it's an indication of what had been there in the past because it doesn't really get replaced even when the species changes," Roca said. "The most convincing evidence is the lack of mtDNA from forest elephants in Eritrea."